ABSTRACT
To introduce the reader to this edited collection, we defi ne how the terms ‘youth’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘plural worlds’ are used here by the range of authors. By ‘youth’ we refer collectively to a wide chronological scale – young people of both sexes in the age range 12 to 35 (or even 10 to 30 in some countries). This age range indicates the extent to which the cultural age category of ‘youth’ has expanded to include some who are legally recognized elsewhere in society as children, and some who are legally recognized elsewhere in society as adults. In this book we are less concerned with offi cial status, and more concerned with social and cultural practices in the life trajectories of young people. Our interest lies in the social construction of identity, in young people as creative social actors, in cultural consumption and social movements – the distinctiveness of local youth cultures in a globalized world.
